Friday, May 06, 2005

Georgia On My Mind

Kevin Francois, a junior at Spencer High School in Columbus, has found himself suspended for ten days, following his refusal to end a phone call he had taken on his cell phone during his lunch break on May 4.

The phone call? From his mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, serving her country in Iraq. Bates had phoned her son, and when the lunch break ended, a teacher told Kevin to hang up the phone.

You can imagine his reaction.

"This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom," Kevin said to a teacher, according to the Knight Ridder news service.

The teacher attempted to remove the phone from his hands. Kevin, understandably, was not very happy with this. Profanities undoubtedly were exchanged, and Kevin was suspended for ten days.

Assistant Principal Alfred Parham said, "Kevin got defiant and disorderly with (Assistant Principal) Mr. Turner and another assistant principal...he got defiant with me. He refused to leave Mr. Turner's office. When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we're not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days."

Good grief, another example of a stupid zero-tolerance policy in action. Why would you tell a kid who is speaking to a parent in Iraq to hang up the phone? Can't they bend the rules in this case? I'd be pretty angry if I were that kid, too, and I'd probably exchange some profanities with the teacher.

When I served during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, phone calls to family and friends provided a huge boost to morale. And when I called home, I wanted to talk for as long as I could. I spent hundreds of dollars on phone calls, and being able to stay in touch helped to cope with the experience of serving far away from home.

Hopefully this school will reverse its ruling and not punish a kid who just wanted to talk to his mother.